Advertising experts expose how supplement companies lure you into buying their products

When you’re watching TV or browsing the Internet, you’ll likely see advertisements for various supplements. Vitamins, amino acids, herbs, minerals, or a combination of them that promise to help reduce stress, promote weight loss, improve circulation, improve the immune system, "enhance performance," and more. They come in capsules, shakes, gummies, or even full-fledged snacks. Your doctor might have even recommended you take some. However, it can be easy to rely too heavily on supplements for your overall health and buy too much into what advertising is telling you.

You’re not a fool or anything if an ad influenced you to buy and use a supplement. Depending on what you’re using, the supplement might actually help you. However, it’s important to remember that advertisers are focused primarily on getting you to buy the product rather than ensure that it’s right for you. Ad experts say that the most effective ads focus on your struggles with ad copy such as:

“Tired that spare tire around your waist?”

“Do you feel old and tired with less energy?”

“Are you stressed and nothing seems to calm you down at the end of the day?” 

They also try to trigger your emotions to encourage you to buy with phrases like:

“Imagine yourself with a slimmer figure” 

"Everyone else is boosting their energy—why not you?” 

“Frustrated with supplements that don’t work?”

They also team with influencers to encourage their followers to try their product and present commercials with bright colors, people doing fun activities, or attracting the opposite sex. Do they promise that taking this product will make your life better? No, but they’re implying it with the imagery. With some supplements, they will often encourage you to make taking it as a part of your routine and offer BOGO deals, subscriptions at a discounted price, or other offers to keep you buying it again and again. Mind you, what is being described are ads that work within the law—i.e., they're legal. Yet there are hundreds of scammy ads for supplements that don't work and are probably not legal given that they're made with deepfakes or are willfully misleading.

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That’s where the trouble might come in. While supplement companies have legal standards to uphold, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates supplements differently. Partly because of that, many supplements have extra ingredients that could be harmful. In fact, some supplements may not work well at all or maybe work too well.

In a study, Dr. Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at Cambridge Health Alliance, did research with his colleagues that found 25 different brands of melatonin gummies (used to promote better sleep) had dangerously high levels of the active ingredient—one of which was 347% higher than what was listed on the label! This concern about too much or too little of the advertised ingredient applies especially to supplements purchased directly from manufacturers online rather than a pharmacy. The FDA doesn't come into play regarding that.

“The FDA leaves it up to companies to ensure the purity and safety of their products. But there's not much incentive. It rarely penalizes manufacturers for not having the right amount of ingredients in a product," says Dr. Cohen.

“The problem that we've had recently, in recent years especially, is that there's been an explosion of new ingredients,” Cohen noted in another study. “There are many of these ingredients—these are individual compounds found in botanicals or other substances---that can pose health risks. Because the FDA isn't vetting these products before they show up on store shelves or on the Internet, what happens is that they can pose unpredictable risks.”

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Because of this loose regulation, some supplements may have ingredients that could hurt you, have too little of the active ingredient, or too much of it.

What about vitamins? Many doctors, including the ones cited in this article, believe that most of us get the right dosage of vitamins and minerals through the food we eat every day with a balanced diet. Supplements could help people who need “supplemental help” due to a health issue or a deficiency along with proper treatment and medicine. This is why they’re called “supplements” instead of outright medicine, but some advertising doesn’t make this notion clear.

Another reason to consult with your doctor about supplements is that they could actually turn from helpful to harmful, even if they’re legitimate with no additional ingredients. For example, taking St. John’s wort can reduce the effectiveness of heart medications, birth control pills, and some antidepressants among other medicines.

Doctors recommend that before deciding to take a supplement, you consult your primary physician to make sure there aren’t other methods to address your problem, whether it’d be a prescription medication, treatment, or lifestyle change. If your doctor thinks it is safe to take a supplement, it’s recommended that you scrutinize and ask some questions about a product before you take it.

The Department of Defense even has a checklist to help root out unsafe supplements, which includes:

• Is there an approved third-party certification seal on the product label?
• Are there less than six ingredients on the Supplement Facts?
• Is the label free of the words “proprietary,” “blend,” “matrix,” or “complex”?
• Can you easily pronounce the name of each ingredient on the Supplement Facts label?
• Is the amount of caffeine listed on the label 200 mg or less per serving?
• Is the label free of questionable claims or statements?
• Are all the % Daily Values (% DV) on the Supplement Facts label less than 200%?

If the answer to more than four of these questions is “no,” you may want to stay clear. However, the safest bet is to not take the product if the answer is "no" on any of them, just to be sure.

Supplements could truly be helpful for those who need them, but the question is: do you actually need them or did the advertisement point out a problem you’d like to be solved? In either case, it’s best to consult your doctor before you make any lifestyle changes to ensure your health is monitored. It’ll be the best for your health and your wallet, too.